Thomas Nashe

Thomas Nashe , 1567-1601, English satirist. Very little is known of his life. Although his first publications appeared in 1589, it was not until Pierce Penniless His Supplication to the Devil (1592), a bitter satire on contemporary society, that his natural and vigorous style was fully developed. His ardent anti-Puritanism involved him in the Martin Marprelate controversy , resulting in a scurrilous pamphlet battle with Richard and Gabriel Harvey in which Nashe produced some of his liveliest writing. The Unfortunate Traveler (1594), his best-known work, was a forerunner of the picaresque novel of adventure. His plays include a satirical masque, Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592); and a lost comedy written with Ben Jonson, The Isle of Dogs (1597), which caused the imprisonment of several persons, including Jonson himself, for "seditious and slanderous" language.

Bibliography: See his works edited by R. B. McKerrow (5 vol., 1904-10); selected writings ed. by S. Wells (1964); studies by G. R. Hibbard (1962), S. S. Hilliard (1986), and L. Hutson (1989).

Nashe, Thomas (1567–1601). His first publication was a preface to Greene's Menaphon (1589), surveying the follies of contemporary literature; he expanded this theme in The Anatomie of Absurditie (1589). His hatred of Puritanism drew him into the Martin Marprelate controversy. In 1592 Nashe replied to the savage denunciations of Richard Harvey, astrologer and brother of Gabriel Harvey, with Pierce Pennilesse His Supplication to the Divell. He avenged Gabriel Harvey's attack on R. Greene with Strange Newes, of the Intercepting Certaine Letters (1592). A florid religious meditation, Christs Teares over Jerusalem (1593), was dedicated to Lady Elizabeth Carey, and The Terrors of the Night (1594), a discourse on dreams and nightmares, was dedicated to her daughter. He published The Unfortunate Traveller: Or The Life of Jacke Wilton (1594) and returned to satire with Have with You to Saffron-walden: Or, Gabriell Harveys Hunt is up (1596), to which Harvey replied; in 1599 Archbishop Whitgift ordered that the works of both writers should be suppressed. Nashe's lost satirical comedy The Isle of Dogs also led to trouble with the authorities. He published Nashes Lenten Stuffe (1599), a mock encomium of the red herring (or kipper) which includes a burlesque version of the story of Hero and Leander; and Summers Last Will and Testament (1600). Nashe had a share in Marlowe's Dido, Queene of Carthage. He was amusingly satirized as ‘Ingenioso’ in the three Parnassus Plays (1598–1606).